Week-to-Week: The Reunion Will Not Be Livestreamed
Netflix either underestimated the demand for live content or overestimated their capacity to handle it
Given that I’m not a software engineer, there’s a lot I don’t know about the debacle of Netflix’s attempt to host a live reunion for Love is Blind’s fourth season.
Last month, the streaming service held their first major live event in the form of a Chris Rock standup special, and by all accounts that seemed to proceed smoothly. But perhaps it should have been evident when Netflix purchased the rights to air the Screen Actors Guild Awards this award season but chose to stream this year’s ceremony on YouTube that they know the technology they have in place isn’t quite ready for an event that people actually want to watch live.
Yesterday, I started a conversation among paid subscribers about whether a turn to live events could push them to engage with streaming content differently, not realizing that we’d end up with a case study for the stumbling blocks Netflix still hasn’t figured out. Thus far, streamers have largely shifted to “live” events in programming areas where liveness has established value. Sports is obviously the biggest category, with Amazon and Apple both investing heavily, but concerts are another—Disney’s CEO shakeup happened on the same night Chapek was supposed to be onsite for Elton John live from Dodgers Stadium, for example, and this weekend’s Coachella livestream reinforced younger viewers’ willingness to tune in to live music on their devices (which was deepened during the pandemic as artists turned to livestreams to remain connected with their fans).
What struck me in the wake of the failed livestream of the Love is Blind reunion is how Netflix is using liveness as a draw in a situation where it isn’t actually that important. The reality reunion special is not necessarily an event built around liveness from a production perspective: the various Bravo reunions, for instance, are always taped in advance with details leaking out on social media to further build anticipation. Rather, the value of a reality reunion is in leveraging the intense buildup of social media conversation, and drawing viewers who watched every week, caught up over time, or simply saw others’ posts about it and need to be a part of the “reckoning” that comes as all the drama is aired to the public.
As such, what was revelatory about Netflix’s plan to livestream the Love is Blind reunion was less the potential for spontaneity or direct interaction with the program itself, and more the fact that a show with a large, engaged fanbase would finally be experiencing the show at the same time. Netflix has embraced a weekly-release drop for its reality shows, acknowledging the importance of building momentum and creating narrative pauses for stories to get their hooks into the audience. But between the late night uploads and the fact multiple episodes are still dropping at once, a show with a strong social media presence lacked a collective social media moment where all those fans could get together and react in real time to the drama they’ve been following at different paces for weeks.
Which is to say that Netflix could have achieved their primary goal—creating a social media moment—simply by doing what they ended up resorting to: taping the reunion and scheduling a set time to release it that varied from the traditional pattern. Does it make sense that this time was today at noon pacific, when many who tried to tune in last night will be busy working? Not particularly, but they’re facing an incredible amount of backlash, and a further delay would have likely rankled those who aren’t going to be working who want to see the aftermath as soon as possible. Plus, because Netflix had assembled press for a live viewing in order to do interviews with the contestants in the aftermath, the details from the special are readily available for all to read, so most of the value of the initial strategy has been lost.
But the people most anxious to hear from the couples in the wake of the season finale—which debuted on Thursday—still might have had their live moment, as the technical issues nonetheless allowed some viewers to access the livestream, many of whom broadcast it on TikTok or Instagram. This isn’t the only event that people can experience in this way: every weekend, as I try to avoid spoilers for my own experience in a month’s time, TikTok likes to feed me live videos from that night’s Taylor Swift concert, and late last year I tuned into Paramore’s first concert back from a lengthy hiatus when I stumbled upon on while scrolling. We live in an age where a phone and an internet connection are capable of bringing an audience together for a live moment, which makes users that much more incredulous when all the silicon valley might of Netflix couldn’t figure out how to handle a reality television reunion on their platform.
At the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference last week, I went to a panel discussing in part Netflix’s extensions into realms beyond streaming on-demand content, and one of the topics of discussion was how they’ve struggled to integrate those extensions into the user experience of the platform. TCU’s Kimberly Owczarski presented early research on Netflix’s Tudum, which manifested as both written behind-the-scenes content (which got trimmed considerably amid subscriber losses) and an online fan-facing (pre-recorded) livestream, while University of Baltimore’s Kyle Meikle looked at their short-lived Book Club.1 In all cases, though, this content took place outside of the Netflix platform, which meant it relied on users to extend their investment with Netflix on other platforms like YouTube or Twitter. This is not unhelpful to Netflix from a branding perspective, but it does little to deepen their experience of the shows in the space where Netflix really wants them to be spending their time. Running live events—like Book Club discussions with authors or post-show panels for fan-focused shows like The Witcher—would ritualize the act of logging in at a time when Netflix is fighting with other apps for the pole position on one’s app menu.
We can only speculate on the particular technical issues Netflix ran into, but the takeaway here is that they failed to invest in the infrastructure necessary to experiment in a space that one guesses will be central to their future. Whether that’s silicon valley hubris or an honest underestimation of audience demand doesn’t change the next step: figuring out how to resolve this for the imminent next season of the service’s biggest reality franchise.
Episodic Observations
By all accounts (including the video from Friend of the Newsletter David Chen that was on my Instagram feed this morning) , the actual content of the reunion showcased Vanessa Lachey’s fundamental disconnect with the show’s audience when it came to who people consider the season’s villains, as well as the fact that neither she nor her husband are actually well-suited to moderating a discussion like this. It’s a reminder that they barely host the show as it is, and Netflix really needs to think about disconnecting them from this part of the job.
When I was grabbing a photo for yesterday’s discussion, I wondered why in the world Bartise was part of the promotion for the live reunion, but he also apparently popped up during it to ask a question, further proving that producers don’t have a firm grasp on when individuals involved with a reality franchise become too toxic to be used in a brand role.
Because of the aforementioned conference, I’m behind on pretty much everything that aired in the last week or so, and will be catching up on some of it on the plane ride home this afternoon and evening. Survivor will be last up, and I will update last week’s discussion post with some thoughts of my own before Wednesday’s new episode—I’ll post a Note on Substack when I do so.
A programming note: I swore I’d avoid this at all costs, but I’m going to need to make a change to the calendar that involves removing coverage of a show. It’s nothing personal against Peacock’s Mrs. Davis, which I still haven’t seen and will be watching. However, despite an influx of new subscribers with the new spring lineup, there’s just too much TV happening this spring/summer, especially with some recent announcements of returning shows that will make it into the upcoming schedule. I simply reached a point in budgeting everything out where it felt too risky to commit to it when there’s so much else we’re covering in the next two months, and when I didn’t want to deflate the compensation I’m providing to our contributors. I hope you understand the need to be responsive to the uncertainties around the monthly subscription model, and I’ll put up a Discussion thread for the four-episode premiere later this week—we might post them weekly if there’s interest, a model we could extend to some other shows we just don’t have the budget to cover in the next couple of months.
The panel also featured Anne Major discussing Netflix’s Games initiative, which is also underserved but mainly because it only exists IN the app on mobile devices. The panel was chaired by Cory Barker, who popped into the newsletter last summer to discuss his book Social TV.
I saw your post on Mrs. Davis, and realize I hadn’t read this newsletter fully. The 4 episode rollout is insane, and I hate it. They inexplicably did it with Poker Face, and it took me a few weeks to be fully caught up and in sync with the recaps. I am definitely struggling with too many shows, and am just going to give up on watching in a timely basis, apart from a few (Succession, Barry, Ted Lasso).
I definitely am interested in season end discussions as a work around. If possible it would be nice to read a mini take from you or your contributors, if possible. And then there can be a discussion in the comments. One show I have in mind for that is Rain Dogs, which finishes up Monday night. I am conflicted about that show, but want to wait for after the finale to see where I land.
Also, I think I speak for many: I can’t watch everything on a quick timely basis. So I am happy comments are kept open. I need to get back to Shrinking and will probably be dropping more comments on your recaps. Obviously WAY after the fact of when that show aired.
"I’ll put up a Discussion thread for the four-episode premiere later this week—we might post them weekly if there’s interest, a model we could extend to some other shows we just don’t have the budget to cover in the next couple of months."
Back when the AV Club first made drastic cuts to their coverage, that is what I repeatedly requested. I don't expect every show I like to be covered, but a show specific discussion space for some popular (with your patrons at least ) shows would be great. Maybe take a poll and ask people to list three (or four, or five...) shows they would like covered, ranked or unranked and set up spaces for the most requested shows.